


Polar Bear's Cafe: Visiting A House

by Nacreous (thural)



Category: Avengers, Death Note, Homestuck, Polar Bear's Cafe, Shirokuma Cafe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 09:18:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thural/pseuds/Nacreous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Polar Bear, Penguin, and Panda visit a house, have sandwiches, and go into the basement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polar Bear's Cafe: Visiting A House

                "Panda-kun, hurry up, it's time to go."

                "Go? Go where? I just walked here for lunch..."

                Polar Bear sweetly smiled and hustled his plump young charge out the cafe door. Outside it was a fine bright afternoon in which Panda's complaints were the only cloud. After more ineffectual buzzing about lunch, he, Panda, settled down and matched Polar Bear's rolling stride.

                "But where are we going?"

                Butter-yellow and freshly scrubbed things of all sorts passed to their left (florist, candy shop (display of bamboo lollipops, which led to some disconsolate whining from Panda), trees, Tanaka residence, Tanaka mama, primroses, telephone pole) and to their right (alley, honeysuckle bushes, arcade, hamburger shop, dentist's office.) The leaves rustled and gave off the sweet golden vegetative scent that suggests autumn is not far away.

                "Hmm," Polar Bear hummed mysteriously. "I wonder."

                "Is Penguin-san going to join us?"

                "He's waiting for us there."

                That settled that. Panda allowed himself to be led by the gentle cafe owner, whose opaque will would surely lead them to something interesting, delicious, or both, if previous experience was to be trusted. He enjoyed the sights of the town for as long as they were in town, and the crunch of leaves and gravel under his toes once they left town and took themselves off into the nearby woods, and then, a few minutes later, Panda grew bored. His complaints touched on the lack of bamboo grass, the effort he'd made, Polar Bear's failings as a companion, and closed with a coda on his interrupted lunchtime. Polar Bear uttered soothing things in reply that indicated he was not taking any of these complaints seriously. Panda demurely declined to be offended by this but felt that it really was lunchtime, they'd been walking long enough.

                Soon enough they came upon a house all alone in the tender and cool depths of the forest. It was a ordinary, elderly little bungalow of a single story, whitewashed, with worn blue trim. The windows had been boarded up but the boards were behind the glass and the glass was not broken. Sitting in a shabby rattan rocking chair on the porch was Penguin. He raised a flipper in greeting.

                "Polar Bear, Panda-kun, hello."

                They exchanged friendly greetings. Polar Bear opened up the canvas shoulder bag he'd brought with him and issued to each friend some fortifying snacks. For Penguin there was a fish salad sandwich with lettuce and fish-fat mayonnaise; for Panda there was a bamboo croquette sandwich on a roll with walnut butter; and for Polar Bear himself, there was a nice piece of grilled seal marinated in special sauce. Polar Bear had also brought a thermos of tea and a bottle of juice (Panda took the juice without asking if anyone else wanted it. It was in fact for him, but Penguin scolded him for being grabby anyway.)

                "We came all the way out here for a picnic?" Inquired Panda, licking walnut butter from his paws and looking very cute as he did so.

                "Not really. We came to see the house."

                "Polar Bear didn't tell you anything about it?" Penguin said testily. "He should have said something."

                Panda responded to this with a sticky, "He interrupted my lunch and made me walk all this way!"

                "He really is casual sometimes!"

                "....Casual..." Polar Bear breathed. Suddenly he appeared in a soft sweater.

                "That's cashmere."

                Hundreds of dollars showered from the heavens, each with Polar Bear's face on it.

                "That's cash."

                Blushing and bewigged Polar Bear, dressed in a pretty pink gown, pulled a satin bag from under a cushion of a Louis XIV chair which had not been there a moment ago. The bag spilled jewels everywhere.

                "That's a cachet! Listen, Polar Bear, can't you be more serious at a time like this?"

                Regular Polar Bear readdressed the friends. "Then, shall we go inside?"

                To a chorus of musically grunted accord, he pawed open the door. Within the rooms were dusty first, unlit second, so the only light came from the daylight piercing the boards over the windows, and thirdly, the furnishings were bare and old. A suggestion of fermentation clung to the house, but it might have just been the first fallen leaves cluttering the chimney (the parlor sported a fireplace in a plain mantle, though a dusty drawn spiderweb cluttered its dark mouth.) It was quite silent. Nobody was home; to judge by the coat of mouse-colored must on the lip of the mantle, nobody had been home for a long time. Polar Bear and Penguin wandered in without curiosity. Panda followed, though he gaped at the balding couch and chairs whose finish had splintered over rot beneath.

                "Hey, Polar Bear...."

                "Yes?" Polar Bear sounded extra warm, preliminarily soothing. His young friend had such a worried tone.

                "Did you only bring one sandwich?"

                "One for each of you."

                Panda nibbled his paw in adorable concern. "If we keep walking, then..."

                "If we keep walking, then?..." The steady sound of Polar Bear's and Penguin's footsteps changed as they had proceeded through the house, towards the back and the dingy kitchen. It changed from a regular _tonk tonk_ and _flop flop_ to a _tkshho tkshho_ and a _shp shp_. Here the wood floor and all its dust had been darkened by a thin coat of blood which clung to the feet of the friends, even Panda's. It had a tacky feel and was unpleasant to walk upon. At the edge of the kitchen, near the rear screen door, there was a refrigerator of the old, bulbous, aqua-and-chrome sort. A pile of clothes lay crumpled up in front of it.

                "Oh," said Polar Bear.

                "Light-kun." Penguin added. The two tacked towards the refrigerator. Panda followed and saw that it was not just a pile of clothes. It was a young man, though he'd been crushed and batted at like someone meant to sweep him under the refrigerator. Now he had the dark, soggy appearance of garbage. Probably this was where all of the blood was from, Panda decided. Though if Panda had been only a little more attentive to TV shows about medicine, he would have known that the kitchen contained too much blood for just one young man. He might have wondered how Polar Bear and Penguin were able to tell who it was when so much of the young man's face was a jumble.

                "Hey, Polar Bear...."

                "Yes?"

                "Do you think I could work only one day a week at the Zoo?"

                "Saa..."

                Penguin interrupted. "Time to go to the basement."

                Polar Bear nodded agreeably. Panda reached over the corpse on the floor for the handle of the fridge (maybe it was full of bamboo treats?) but Penguin called to him to hurry up. He was a docile panda, after all, and he followed when he was told.

                The basement door opened with a long creak like a last breath from a eagle onto a yawning black slope. When Polar Bear descended he looked like a tall moon being swallowed up by the sea. He left footprints bearly visible in the dim. Though when he arrived at the bottom of the steps, he fumbled about over his head; there came a brief tinkling and a snap, and then a single lightbulb glowed. The three friends stood in a narrow hallway with a floor which was indistiguishably bare dirt or concrete drowned in dust. The hallway proceeded in a direction the house was not. Doors opened up on either side at regular intervals: plain wooden doors, scuffed, in plain wooden frames. The walls were concrete and had the chilly and faintly damp feeling of below-ground things. They exuded a scent of mildew which killed the sweetness of blood from above.

                The end of the hallway was obscured by distance and dark. Penguin and Polar Bear ambled thereabouts at an unhurried pace, and Panda followed in their wake. Innocently rude and curious, he stopped at each door to open it and look beyond. Some rooms were empty and lit, as the hallway was, with bare lightbulbs that dangled from the ceiling. Some were unlit, impenetrably dark: the sort of soaked, peripatetic darkness that the eye hates and allows itself to find movement in even when there's nothing at all. From time to time Panda imagined he heard a faint scritch-scratching, as if some living thing struggled within the walls or was clawing gently at the door from the side not visible to him. Perhaps it was just Polar Bear and Penguin, who were further and further ahead of him as he dwadled. Their footsteps might echo. The last time Panda had bothered to notice, they were having a conversation about types of cafe mocha and how to properly mix them. Some of the rooms were stacked up with crumpled bodies like the one in the kitchen. The bodies were neatly arranged against the far wall each time, piled one on top of the other like cut firewood, those on top pressing the lower rungs flat and all of them bleeding a soft continuous ooze of fluid which led to the drain in the center of the room and flowed off into who knows what. Only a watery _plop, plop, plop_ alerted Panda  to the idea that the vital fluids didn't just vanish as soon as they leaked into the drain.

                The whole business was odorless, unlike the kitchen. Panda could survey the heaps and look for people he recognized. In one room there were ever so many ashy gray limbs and shoulders jutting out from behind ravaged t-shirts; heads half-missing revealed half-sets of horns. What peculiar people! In another room there were stacks of bodies in glittering costumes, the men all thick-shouldered and muscular excepting one with shreds of black hair still attached to his  permeated scalp, and the women all looking like comic book characters in glittering, breast-enhancing outfits. Panda was slow to notice it but as he continued down the hall, these inhabited rooms seemed to be less and less full. It took him even longer than that to try counting a little, the effort of which exhausted him, and then he figured that there were not any fewer bodies, they were just getting smaller, more dry and less identifiable. Less liquid in these rooms, too, and what was left seemed to rot en route and glisten with algaes. The floor seemed very comfortable after all that counting. Panda laid down.

                In his sleep, he complained that it was too early to wake up and he was off work that day, so Mama shouldn't bother to get him up. A voice much too like a clarinet to be his mother's answered, "Jeez, he must have been worn out."

                Polar Bear asked, "Is he waking up?"

                "Penguin-san, Polar Bear-san," Panda wittered groggily. He sat up and rubbed his eyes with clean soft paws. "What are you doing in my bedroom?"

                "If Grizzly-san were here, he could carry you." Polar Bear said, which meant "get up and walk yourself."

                Panda saw that they were still in the basement corridor. "Then, is it time for breakfast?"

                Penguin snorted and flip-flopped down into the dimming hall. Polar Bear kindly helped Panda to his feet. "It's not long now."

                Panda stopped looking into rooms after this. Nothing was in them much worth seeing. The single lightbulb of the corridor receded further and further into the distance; with the contented, trusting ennui of the semi-conscious, Panda took no notice of this, but followed the pure white shape of Polar Bear into the oncoming darkness. It was not apparent whether he was still really awake at all, honestly. At one point he thought he saw a huge red glowing rectangle sprawl open off in a direction he couldn't name. A sensation of heat prickled his skin. It was just like visiting the baker's. Indistinct, though, and night-tinted, he couldn't promise himself he'd really seen it. He didn't say anything to Polar Bear or Penguin. But Penguin said something to him after a long colorless silence.

                "Oh, I didn't see it on him at first."

                "Because of his black fur." Polar Bear agreed. "You've got one too." He reached out into nothing and then pulled back his paw. Penguin turned; Panda barely saw his white belly.

                "One what?" He asked.

                "Someone is thinking about you," Polar Bear said in a voice so calm it hung in the air like a threat.

                "Oh, Polar Bear, you have lots."

                Polar Bear's black lips curved up in the darkness. It was the only thing Panda really thought he saw. He felt, though: a soft fluttering dashed all over his person like fingertips brushing him in random places. He saw things, he thought, on Polar Bear: black, fluttering shapes. A soft bittersweet smell like copper pennies roasting overtook him then. He was hungry. The shapes of everything became unclear so that he didn't even know when he began to feel pain; it felt only like a more intense stroking at first. Polar Bear receeded from his field of view. It would have been an ideal time for a nap.

              


End file.
